Related Projects

D.I.Y. Freefall

In a two-channel video created specifically for the public digital jumbotron screens at the Culver Center for the Arts, D.I.Y. Freefall juxtaposes playful images of Do-It-Yourself culture. On one screen, a camera is trained on a rough looking ceiling. Tools occasionally fly through and across the frame toward the viewer: A hammer. Sandpaper. A screwdriver. Alternating between absurdity and an almost alarming urgency, the onslaught of falling objects appears both as an opportunity and a constraint. Are we to understand this display of the tools nessesary to build or manipulate physical objects as a gift or a demand? The second screen displays a series of digital tunnels, created by a variety of artists and offered as royalty free images on the internet. The artist has collected and arranged a sequence of videos of this digital trope – a disembodied perspective hurtling through a scripted space. Is the viewer flying or falling, euphoric or terrified? Both images seem similarly conflicted. Is the viewer moving towards an ideal or being assaulted? In the space between these images, the two possibilities do not feel entirely distinct. While the contemporary cultures of “Do it Yourself” may function as a call to liberation, they also fold neatly into the discourses of consumer marketing and austerity.